Mama Mia!

As you can probably tell from the title, Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop, the latest in the Cooking Mama series, is a Nintendo DS game that takes place in the kitchen. But it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be a gourmet chef. Rather, it’s about how good you are at putting recipes together on time.

Egg Timer

This totally fun new game from Majesco, which came out October 20, 2009, introduces a whole bunch of new dishes not seen in Cooking Mama 1 and Cooking Mama 2. The recipes range in terms of difficulty from simple lollipops to complex chile con carne (that’s chile with meat, for all you non-Spanish-speakers out there). With these new recipes come new steps that are just as LOL silly and lighthearted as previous versions of the game.

For example, you’ll be asked to rush to peel boiled tomatoes before your hand gets burned or lift frying squid as fast as possible before the cat gobbles them down! But the basic point of the game is as simple as it’s always been: you need to follow the recipe correctly and on time in order to gain the points you’ll need to determine your dish’s final score. The more accurately you cook (by following the recipes provided), the better your dish will be.

Stirring Up Trouble

Unfortunately, considering it’s all about time and precision, there are some things about Cooking Mama 3 that are frustrating from a player perspective. For example, the delayed stirring action in the game is back – as in previous Cooking Mama incarnations, the game refuses to register your stirring movements accurately. And circling different piles of food to get a specific weight is pretty much impossible; we had no idea how much the portions we selected weighed until we dropped them on a scale. Bugs like this cost time and points, which is incredibly annoying when you’re cooking up a storm in an attempt to win.

Luckily, like most everything in life and gaming, practice really does make perfect. With Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop, the more you practice your technique and making the recipes the better you get at the game. The game isn’t as hard to play as versions one and two were. For example, in the last two games in the series it was too easy to spill flour you had to sift, and you couldn’t go back to correct your mistake. In Cooking Mama 3 you can just blow into the DS’s mic to clear the air of spilled flour and start sifting again with ruining your overall score.

Mulitplayer action in Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop is pretty much the same as in past versions, except you can now use the DS’s Wi-Fi connection to allow up to four friends to race to complete cooking steps the fastest (stuff like cracking eggs, catching the most slices of toast or frying the most fish).

Shop & Drop

A new part of Cooking Mama in this third game in the series is the shopping game. Mama gives you a list of items to get at the grocery store. You have to get around the crowded store finding all the items while dodging other customers that can cause life-threatening collisions with your character.